


buttons

by onlyeverthus



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 11:11:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4744163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlyeverthus/pseuds/onlyeverthus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose Tyler's life sometimes seems made up of buttons to press.</p>
            </blockquote>





	buttons

Rose Tyler's life sometimes seems made up of buttons to press.

There's a button to silence the obnoxious beeping of her alarm clock, which she's been known to mash more than once with sleepy, fumbling fingers on those days where morning has come too soon. There's one to cross the street, and one to signal her bus stop. There's the doorbell to Mickey's flat that she pushes frantically when she wants to annoy him, grinning broadly when he answers the door with a scowl. A button to make tea, a button to turn off the telly, a button to silence her phone when she goes to sleep at night.

It's a button that brings her to him, the down arrow on the lift that takes her down to the basement. She's cornered by shop window dummies and has a moment to think of how ridiculous it is to die this way, when there's a hand around hers and a man with a manic grin who tells her to run.

There are more buttons after that, but these buttons take her new places: Cardiff in 1869, London in 1941, Satellite 5 in 200,000, and the end of the world in the year 5 billion. They introduce her to her father, and allow her to hold his hand as he dies.

These buttons, all of these new places and new people and new experiences, help bring her closer to the man who told her to run (how long ago that feels now), and when he sends her home with the push of yet another button, she loves him too much to stay away.

She wakes up on the floor of the TARDIS and wonders what happened, but he's there and she's there and for a moment everything is as it should be, until he explodes with brilliant golden light.

He changes and she's frightened of him; he pushes a button to take her home.

There's a big red button he smacks with his palm and one he hits with a satsuma, and she realizes he's still the same man, and she remembers why she loves him.

The buttons continue to take them to new places: Scotland in 1879, London in 1953, a 51st century ship with access to 18th century France, and New Earth twenty-three years after the old one got swallowed by the sun. They take her to a man who looks like her father but isn't, and she has to watch him walk away from her.

There's a tiny red button that's meant to keep her with him

_How long are you gonna stay with me?_

_Forever._

and a big yellow button that takes her away.

 

 

 

Her new world is filled with the same buttons from before: alarm clocks and crosswalks, doorbells and lifts. One day she tries to keep track of just how many buttons she presses, buttons that do nothing and take her nowhere. She loses count by lunchtime.

The stars begin to go out, and a new button is created, a button that takes her between worlds, through the Void and out the other side, until she finds him again.

They save the universe, they save all universes, and then she loses him again on that cold, windy beach. But he's left her this man, this _other_ him, and when she feels the steady beat of his single heart and the familiar way his fingers wrap around her palm, she thinks it's enough.

 

He's there to tell her good morning when the alarm goes off now, smiling sleepily at her as he reaches over to brush her cheek with his thumb. He tells her jokes while they wait at crosswalks, and he steals kisses inside of lifts. He holds her hand as they walk home, and tells her he loves her every night before they go to sleep.

The buttons are still there, but she doesn't think about them anymore. Her life is still human and sometimes dull, but it seems so much better, so much _brighter_ , now that he's living it with her.  



End file.
